Posts Tagged ‘Games Workshop’

There’s a moment in this first in-engine trailer for Total War: Warhammer [official site] when the Emperor Karl Franz rallies his troops on the battlefield. It’s a reminder of one of my favourite parts of any Total War game – the pre-combat speeches that draw on the context of the coming battle to deliver bravadao in the face of certain doom, or the swaggering arrogance of a general whose forces outnumber the enemy ten to one. When the forces in this video meet, everybody seems to lose. Some are stabbed, some are stomped…one poor chap gets eaten.

When it rains grimdark, it pours. Following the announcement of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor, an action-RPG being made by the Van Helsing lot at Neocore, GOG have dug up and released three old Warhammer games. The virtuous virtual vendors of vintage video games now stock for your purchasing and subsequent playing pleasure Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate, Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000, and, from the Warhammer Fantasy line, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat.

In the grim, dark future, there is only war, but in the grim, sunny present we… well, Warhammer 40k games haven’t taken over everything just yet. Games Workshop are preparing to launch an assault on another genre, though, announcing an action-RPG with the lengthy title of mouthy title of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr [official site].

NeocoreGames, them lot behind the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing action-RPG trilogy, are will let us purge heretics as a member of the Inquisition – the fiery secret religious police of the Imperium. The game’s due to launch in 2016, but I couldn’t tell you much more beyond that.

This is a good trailer. It’s a good trailer even though it doesn’t contain even a picosecond of in-game footage. This first ‘cinematic’ trailer for the Creative Assembly’s RTS adaptation of Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battles is a good trailer because it’s got a big old dust-up between the Orcs (on boars!) and the Empire (on Griffons!) with a side-helping of Zombie Dragons, dwarfs fighting Arachnarok spiders and what looks an awful lot like mother-lovin’ Tzeentch. I might be wrong in that, but lord I hope not, because Tzeentch has always been my Chaos god, and sadly he’s gotten a raw deal in videogames to date

I never played Games Workshop’s Chainsaw Warrior (or had even heard of it), but I dig the idea: a single-player board game using dice and cards to recreate a big daft zombie-filled action movie over an hour of real time. Auroch Digital turned the board game into video game back in 2013, and now they’ve released a sequel which changes the original formula a little as well as bringing a new story. Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night [Steam page] arrived yesterday at £4.79.

“Left 4 Dead with ratmen” is how I’ll crudely summarise what little I know about the newly announced Warhammer: The End Times – Vermintide [official site]. It’s a co-op FPS pitting heroes against hordes of Skaven in shoot-o-melee action, coming in the second half of this year from War of the Vikings makers Fatshark.

Warhammer 40K is more my bag than Warhammer Fantasy, so all I really know about the Skaven comes from Kieron in pubs. They’re hordes of ravenous little ratmen, I get, but also giant rat ogres and sometimes ride in rodent wheels bristling with knives and lightning guns. Cool-o!

The news that an adaptation of Games Workshop’s Battlefleet Gothic was in development made for happy reading last week but solid facts were thin on the ground. We knew that the game would be real-time rather than turn-based, which was cause for concern in some quarters, and that four factions would be available. Now, following a meeting with the developers yesterday, I have all of the details necessary to soothe concerns. Armada is packed with clever ideas and I’ve dissected them below.

Cathedral ships, ahoy! Focus Interactive have announced that they will publish a real-time strategy adaptation of Games Workshop’s Battlefleet Gothic. Armada is already in development and we’ll be taking a closer look in very near future but the first details emerged moments ago. Fleets will be drawn from four forces – Imperial, Chaos, Eldar and Ork – and ships will be fully customisable, from their weaponry to support sub-systems. Admirals and crew will gain experience from one battle to the next, but the initial press release doesn’t contain any details regarding campaign or mission structure. Giant images await below, in the Warp.

Total War: Warhammer is coming. Confirmation comes in the form of a single line in the upcoming Art of Total War book. Mike Simpson, the creative director of the series, is discussing the future of Total War and after writing about Total War: Arena’s exploration of multiplayer, he lands the hammer blow.

“…taking the series to a fantasy setting with Total War: Warhammer.”

It might not be called Total Warhammer but at least it has a name. The artbook is officially released on 23rd Jan but the quote was plucked out by StormOfRazors, a TWCenter poster who received an early copy. Thoughts below.

Warhammer Quest is a port of a tablet adaptation of a tabletop game originally released by Games Workshop in the mid-nineties. Its problems include a stack of day one DLC, an in-game gold shop and an interface that hasn’t made the transition from touchscreen quite as smoothly as you might hope. Despite all of that, it’s simple turn-based tactical combat is weirdly compelling and sundering skaven and snotlings can be a fine way to while away a few lazy evenings.

So many clauses of an RPS employment contract are written in blood that, honestly, you start skipping past them once you realised they’re mostly harmless blood curses compelling one to e.g. substitute in “foot-to-ball” any time I try to write “foot-to-ball”.

Those reams of sticky vellum must surely also contain something about Games Workshop games, as here I am writing about Warhammer Quest coming to PC in January, even though it’s a port of a mobile game from 2013. Well, the blood curses are making me, and the fact that a quick look finds folks saying good things about the mobile version, aside from its microtransaction-o-rama.